Saturday, April 2, 2011

Horror and Me

As an avid movie fan, the one genre I always stayed away from was horror.I just never had the urge to stay up until all hours of the morning due to fear I earned at the cinema.However, after our past few viewings, I am starting to have a better understanding of the category that is horror.Movies such as Uzumaki and Suspiria reach into the dark corners of the mind and pull out the weird and the occult thoughts that give us nightmares and give them life.I sat in class the past two week with my instincts telling me to disregard the film being projected on the screen, but my curiosity forced me to watch.Did I like what I saw? No.But I certainly remember it.This is the ultimate purpose of scary movies: to pique our interest by playing out our most bizarre and terrifying thoughts and in doing so leave us thinking deeply about scenarios that are insurmountably unlikely or impossible.

A perfect example is one of the few horror films I have seen: Final Destination.Yes I know, not the most quality film ever made, but the scenarios of the characters’ deaths were so bizarre I couldn’t stop watching.And the funny part is that, despite their unlikelihood, I was still thinking about them after the movie was over.As a matter of fact, after watching two actors be killed off by hanging themselves in the shower and impaling themselves with utensils, I was extraordinarily wary around my kitchen and bathroom.That is what horror is meant to do: scare its viewers.The scenarios are unreal and the magic of the fourth wall allows us to rationalize this.However, a movie accomplishes the goal of horror by leaving the viewer wondering what if.